Individuals who were using a website to cheat on their spouses and significant others will not remain anonymous if they choose to remain on the lawsuit against that website–Ashley Madison. This week a judge ruled that anyone who continues in the legal fight will not be allowed to use pseudonyms in the lawsuit.

Let’s start at the beginning of this whole mess: this lawsuit began in response to last summer’s hack of the Ashley Madison website, a service with the motto: “Life is short. Have an Affair.” The website, which purports to facilitate men and women in finding people to have affairs with, is used most predominantly by men. In the hack, 11 million account passwords were discovered because of improperly secured accounts. This led to the release of 32 million customers’ emails, sexual preferences, names, and addresses on the internet, which caused backlash in small communities, investigations of government employees found using the site, and even the blackmailing of some individuals whose information was released.

In response to the release of personal information, several Ashley Madison users have decided to sue the company for claiming to secure personal information and then failing to do so. While many of their identities have already been released, the plaintiffs petitioned to use pseudonyms in the case in order to protect themselves from judgment of the public.

Unfortunately for the roughly 50 people suing Ashley Madison, Judge John A. Ross, a United States District Judge, ruled on April 6th to deny the motion for plaintiffs in the case to use pseudonyms. Part of the judge’s ruling was based on the fact that:

The personal and financial information plaintiffs seek to protect has already been released on the Internet and made available to the public.

In addition, the judge acknowledged the fact that:

Only in extraordinary circumstances may civil litigation proceed under fake names, like in cases such as sex crimes and suits about juveniles.

What the judge did allow is for the members who are currently involved in the suit to dismiss their complaints and instead file as members of a class in a class-action suit. If it is certified they will not need to release their names individually in order to sue.

A lot of the people whose names were released in the hack have faced serious consequences because of the release of information. Some people have been blackmailed into paying bitcoin bribes in order to try to stop blackmailers from ousting the cheaters to their oblivious spouses. Town officials have been shamed by their local newspapers and publications.

While the huge breach in security was unexpected for the members of the Ashley Madison site and the people whose information was released may have legal standing to sue the company, it’s hard to have much sympathy for cheaters whose significant others found out about their infidelity. This is a good lesson for all of us to be a little more skeptical about the security of personal information online and the reality of bad karma. Next time you go online to find a hot date with whom to two-time your wife, maybe think twice before plugging in your government email address.

Alexandra Simone

Alex Simone is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street and a student at The George Washington University, studying Political Science. She is passionate about law and government, but also enjoys the finer things in life like watching crime dramas and enjoying a nice DC brunch. Contact Alex at ASimone@LawStreetmedia.com

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Harvard Law is working with an analytics platform called Ravel Law to digitize American case law and make it open-access and free online. The project has been named “Free the Law” and is a huge and massively beneficial endeavor for law school students, lawyers, researchers, nonprofits, and the public as a whole.

The collection that Harvard Law is digitizing consists of roughly 40,000 books containing four million pages of legal decisions. Harvard Law has the largest academic law library in the world; these books have been curated over the last two centuries. The database is expected to be completed in full by 2017, selections will be open to the public before then. For example, Harvard Law and Ravel Law are attempting to complete state databases for California and New York by the end of this fall.

There are a few different motivations for why Harvard Law and Ravel Law are taking this dramatic step–the fact that preserving pages on the internet is certainly more compact and efficient does come in to play. But the main motivation appears to be a desire to provide free, open-access information to the public all in one place. Jonathan Zittrain, the George Bemis Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School, and Vice Dean for Library and Information Resources, stated:

Libraries were founded as an engine for the democratization of knowledge, and the digitization of Harvard Law School’s collection of U.S. case law is a tremendous step forward in making legal information open and easily accessible to the public. The materials in the library’s collection tell a story that goes back to the founding of America, and we’re proud to preserve and share that story.

Currently, many of the cases that are being compiled by the Free the Law project are accessible to the public–but not in an easily usable or searchable format. Instead, many firms have to pay commercial services like LexisNexis or Westlaw to gain easy access. The Free the Law project aims to make this information accessible to even those who don’t have the money to pay for such services. Whether or not this project will hurt companies like LexisNexis and Westlaw will have to be seen–although it is doubtful because they do offer other legal tools and services as well that won’t be replicated in the Harvard Law and Ravel Law database.

Overall, the goals of transparency and access in the justice system are laudable, and consistent with the general move toward open-access and equality that the internet has enabled in recent years. It’s a big project to take on for the school and the digital platform, but if it has the intended effects, it will have a big influence as well.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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